


Constant As The Tides

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Future Fic, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Husbands, Kissing, M/M, Mention of Temporary Character Death, Nightmares, WidoFjord Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 12:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19296157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Fjord's adventuring days are mostly over and done, his pact long broken, the serpent sealed away. Still, sometimes old nightmares resurface. At least he no longer has to face them alone.





	Constant As The Tides

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Widofjord Week 2019. I only had time to fill one prompt this week, and I knew it had to be this one because, I mean, the prompt was dreams and nightmares. You know me.

Fjord lays on the sand, the sound of the ocean and the warmth of the sun lulling him into a peaceful almost doze, turning his thoughts slow and introspective. If only he could go back in time and tell his younger self how everything would turn out. That one day he would find a group of people that would become his family. That he would have a house of his own by the sea, and that every night he would fall asleep next to the man he loved, and would wake up next to him every morning. Would the boy he had been, lonely and fearful, believe him?

A shadow falls across Fjord’s face and he opens his eyes to see Caleb standing over him, his hair shining like treasure in the sun, silver and copper.

“Are you going to sleep the day away, old man?” Caleb teases, his smile making his blue eyes crinkle at the corners. He reaches out a ink-stained hand to help Fjord to his feet.

Fjord takes the offered hand, their wedding rings clinking together, and tries to ignore the way the joints of his knees creak in protest as he stands up. “You’ve got as much silver in your hair as I do, wizard,” he says as he cups the back of Caleb’s head to pull him in for a kiss.

Caleb hums agreement against Fjord’s lips and for several moments Fjord’s entire world is Caleb’s body against his, the warmth of the sun and his wizard surrounding him and the sound of the surf sliding against the shore. Eventually he breaks the kiss, still running his hands through Caleb’s hair. “Done studying for the morning?”

“Ja,” Caleb replies. The two of them are mostly retired from the adventuring life, but that hasn’t stopped Caleb from doing research and trying to create new versions of old spells. Fjord’s pretty sure that even death might not stop the man, if what he’s heard from Beau about Ioun’s divine library is true. If it involves books, Caleb will find his way there somehow. “I am done for the moment and it is not quite time for lunch yet.” He runs a hand down Fjord’s back to the curves of his ass. “Whatever shall I do to pass the time?”

Fjord has to chuckle at the wicked gleam in Caleb’s eye. “You are insatiable, you know that?”

Caleb grins. “With such a beautiful man as you in front of me, how can I not be?”

After all these years, the praise still makes Fjord blush. Caleb just laughs and gives Fjord’s ass a squeeze before he breaks away from him, running down towards the surf and shedding his clothes at the same time.

Fjord laughs as he pulls his own shirt over his head, as Caleb stands at the edge of the water, naked, with the surf foaming around his ankles. It still amazes him every day how lucky he is, how lucky they both are.

The wind picks up at the same instant the sky darkens, causing Fjord to frown and look up at the suddenly ink-black sky. “Caleb!” Fjord calls over the sound of the wind and the waves. “I think we should go inside! Storm’s coming!”

Perhaps the wind carries Fjord’s words away, because Caleb doesn’t come back up the beach towards him. The water has gone a dark greenish-black, and Fjord feels his heart start to race because it reminds him of how the sea had looked the night of the shipwreck, the night of the—

Something rises out of the water, something dark and scaled and Fjord doesn’t even have time to scream as the shape wraps itself around Caleb and drags him under the water.

Fjord runs down the beach, sand slipping under his feet, waves crashing into him, trying to break his body against the shore. There had been a time when the water would have been his to command, a time when he would have been able to breathe instead of choking when the waves crash over his face, but that time is long ago and long done. The pact had been broken, the serpent sealed away, this can’t be happening, this can’t be real.

Wildmother, help me, please don’t let me be too late, Fjord pleas as he dives into the depths, as he swims against the current, muscles aching within moments, his chest straining as he holds his breath. Once upon a time a sword would have come to his hand, but he has no weapon with him now, his reforged blade hanging over the mantle. He’ll strangle the damn snake with his bare hands if that’s what it takes to save Caleb.

The water is cold, so cold, so clear. He can see Caleb ahead of him, his hair a bright beacon in the dark as he thrashes against the snake’s grasp. Fjord tries to swim faster even as his limbs stiffen with cold, as Caleb’s struggles get weaker.

PUNISH

Uk’otoa’s voice is everywhere, his eyes are everywhere, glowing with sickly yellow light and the pain that lances through Fjord’s skull is nothing compared to the pain in his heart when the black coil around Caleb squeezes all the air from his lungs. There is a moment, an endless agonizing moment, where Caleb’s blue eyes lock with Fjord’s for the very last time before they roll back into his head and he’s gone and Fjord screams and the water rushes into him and he’s drowning—

————-

“Fjord.” Caleb’s voice comes to him in the darkness, worried but firm. “Fjord, you are having a nightmare.”

Fjord jerks awake, coughing and gasping, wincing at the early morning light coming in through the window. Blankets surround him, and he’s wrapped in Caleb’s arms, not the cold embrace of the sea. The pain has come from the nightmare with him, his head throbbing sickeningly like how the orb that had once been inside him had pulsed in his chest.

“Caleb,” Fjord tries to say, but it comes out as a wheeze, his breathing too hard and too fast. He’s shaking as if he was still in that nightmare ocean, and he can feel tears wet on his cheeks, the salt taste on his lips too much like the taste of the water as it had filled his mouth.

“I’m here,” Caleb says gently. “I’m here. Breathe with me, love.”

Caleb’s breathing is slow, his heartbeat steady, and Fjord presses himself closer to Caleb’s chest, to the proof that the man in his arms is alive and his nightmare has been simply that, a nightmare. He buries his face in Caleb’s neck, breathing in the scent of sweat and sleep as his frantic gasps even out into shuddering breaths.

“There we are,” Caleb’s voice is a whisper. “Just like that.”

Fjord still remembers the first time he had a nightmare in Caleb’s arms, how he had woken up crying in fear, and then had continued crying out of embarrassment, curling in on himself as if that would have hidden his tears. And through it all, Caleb had held him and stroked his hair and told Fjord it was all right to cry, which had only made Fjord cry harder with relief.

Caleb waits until Fjord has been breathing regularly for several minutes before he speaks again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Sometimes Fjord doesn’t. Sometimes Caleb doesn’t either, on the nights when he’s the one who wakes up screaming or sobbing or unable to make a sound. Talking helps though, and oh, it had taken Fjord so long to learn that, to feel safe telling other people what he was feeling. He feels safe now, wrapped in the warmth of Caleb’s arms and surrounded by the scent of him.

“Remember yesterday?” Fjord asks. “On the beach? Before lunch?”

“Of course,” Caleb says, and Fjord swears he can hear the wizard smiling. “That was a more than pleasant way to work up an appetite, yes?”

“Yeah,” Fjord agrees. “Yeah, it really was. Well, the nightmare started off like that, all sweet and everything. And then this storm came rolling in and you were standing in the water and he just— grabbed you.”

Fjord doesn’t have to say who “he” is, just like Caleb doesn’t have to say Trent’s name when he is the one with bad dreams.

“And you were under the water and I was trying to save you, except I couldn’t get to you in time and his voice was everywhere and his eyes were everywhere and you drowned and I was drowning and—“ Fjord hears his voice rising, his breath hitching, and he closes his mouth, tusks digging slightly into his upper lip, and breathes deeply until he is calm again. “And then you woke me up.”

Caleb hums gently, and the vibrations soothe the pain of Fjord’s headache for the briefest of moments. “It has been a long time since you have had a nightmare like that.”

It has. Back in their adventuring days it had been worse, when every close call, every near death had brought about nightmares where Caleb or one of his friends, his family, had been in trouble and Fjord had been helpless to save them. Even after Uk’otoa had been sealed away for good, every time Fjord had dreamt about him for years after he had been sure it had meant that the leviathan was breaking his way free to come for him and the others. 

“Was kind of hoping they were done with,” Fjord mumbles into Caleb’s neck. “Things are so much better now.”

“Ja, they are,” Caleb says softly into Fjord’s hair. “And that is why our nightmares are about losing the things we love. Because we have something to lose.”

Fjord feels Caleb’s gentle embrace tighten just a fraction, and he knows the wizard is thinking about his own dark dreams, the ones where Fjord is trapped in a burning house and Caleb’s hands are on fire, or the ones where Caleb thinks himself awake only to see Trent standing over their bed, charred flesh still clinging to his bones and magic crackling from his skeletal fingertips.

Fjord rubs Caleb’s back soothingly and places a kiss in the hollow of his throat. “I’m not going anywhere,” Fjord says, and Caleb chuckles.

“I am supposed to be comforting you,” he says, pulling back and giving Fjord a fond look that softens into concern, reaching out to cup the right side of Fjord’s face. “Are you having one of those headaches again?”

“Yeah,” Fjord admits, moving to get out of bed, as reluctant as he is to leave the warmth of Caleb’s arms. Caleb gently puts a hand on Fjord’s chest to stop him.

“I will make tea,” Caleb says. “You rest. I will only be gone a minute. All right?”

Fjord thinks about protesting and following Caleb into the kitchen, shoving aside the pain and dizziness the best he can just so he doesn’t have to be alone. But instead he just lets himself sink back into the mattress, throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the light. “Hurry back,” is what he says instead.

He hears Caleb move over the the windows, the shutters closing with a click, then the soft sounds of Caleb’s bare feet move out of the room and down the hallway. There are other sounds too, the rustling of sea grass, the gentle rush of the waves, the minor creaks and groans of the house, all familiar to him as breath. He could fall back asleep if it weren’t for the pain, and he winces as he moves his arm and opens his eyes in the nearly dark room. The headaches, like the nightmares, are leftovers from the day he had broken his pact with Uk’otoa. Turned out breaking off a pact with a demigod leviathan wasn’t something most people walked away from, and the fact that Fjord only had skull splitting headaches and a few very interesting scars from that encounter, and was even alive to have them was a testament to the strength of himself and his friends and his goddess.

Fjord still remembers the Garden and Her smiling face. He remembers opening his eyes and seeing the world through a haze of diamond dust, Jester clinging to one hand, Caduceus’s gentle smile, Beau crying and swearing as Yasha held her, Nott reaching for a flask that wasn’t there. He remembers Caleb. Caleb who had been holding Fjord’s other hand. Caleb who had looked at Fjord like the man was seeing him for the first time. Caleb, whose tears had fallen on Fjord’s lips like a kiss.

His past self probably wouldn’t believe him, that someday he’d have friends that he’d come back from the dead to protect. That someday there would be someone he could cry in front of without shame, someone who would be there on his worst nights, who would laugh and cry with him and take care of him and he would take care of in turn. Oh if only his past self had known how much love had been waiting for him.

“You look like you’re a million miles away,” Caleb says when he comes back in. There’s a blue-green mug clasped in his hands, a wedding present from Caduceus, enchanted by one of his sisters so that the tea inside is always the prefect temperature. Fjord sits up in bed and takes the mug, drinking the familiar brew, the pain already starting to recede by slow degrees by the time he empties the mug and hands it back to Caleb, who places it on the bedside table.

“Just thinking about how lucky we are,” Fjord says as Caleb slips back into bed. They kiss, long and lingering before Fjord lays his head on Caleb’s chest and closes his eyes, listening to the comforting beat of his heart. He’s drowsy already, a side effect of the tea. “I mean, we’ve both got scars, and sometimes there’s bad nights, but we made it, you know? We’re still here. We’re still together.”

“That we are,” Caleb says softly, stroking Fjord’s hair, and Fjord feels a brush of lips against his forehead, as gentle as a dream. “That we are.”

Fjord slips back to sleep, lulled by the beat of Caleb’s heart and the sound of his breathing, as constant and rhythmic as the tides.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm angel_in_ink on Twitter and angel-ascending on Tumblr if ya'll want to stop by and say hi!


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